Bitterness Is Not the Same as ‘Hoppiness’

The good folks at Dogfish Head Craft Brewery—by any measure one of the more interesting and accomplished breweries around—have done us a disservice. They recently brewed up an IPA called “Hoo Lawd” (say it out loud), which they claim is the “hoppiest beer ever.”

While the average IPA lands somewhere between 40-60 IBUs, this latest release clocks in at 658 IBUs (international bittering units)…. While other awesome, uber hoppy beers have claimed to achieve higher theoretical IBUs, Hoo Lawd has received scientific confirmation and documentation from two independent labs that this is, in fact, the hoppiest commercial beer ever brewed.

The disservice in this case is not the beer (which I haven’t tasted and which may be sublime), but the use of IBUs to stand in for a measure of “hoppiness.” This acronym appears almost as frequently on bottles and chalkboards as “ABV,” but it’s at best irrelevant and at worst misleading—because IBUs don’t measure “hoppiness,” they measure bitterness.

The cone (or “strobile”) from the common hop plant may look unimposing, but it contains hundreds of chemical compounds, and these compounds do quite a bit to alter a batch beer. Their most important function—the reason they are in nearly every beer made—was originally their anti-microbial qualities, which warded off spoilage and made beer last longer. Other compounds help build a rich, stable head and make it easier to create the beautiful tracery left behind on the glass. Breweries started adding spices to beers almost immediately after learning to brew them, in part to balance the sweetness of the malted grains and hops turned out to especially able in this regard, too.

But perhaps the most important function of hops in modern brewing is to impart the distinctive flavors and aromas that infuse 21st century beers. They’re incredibly versatile, expressing themselves as fruit (mango, lychee, apple), forest (pine and cedar), wine (usually white wine grapes), flowers (geranium, rose, gardenia), and of course citrus (orange, lemon, grapefruit). When you encounter a saturated American IPA, you’re getting a full-frontal assault of these flavors and aromas. It’s what characterizes these beers, and why they are becoming so popular. But IBUs, which express the amount of certain dissolved compounds in solution, only measure bitterness.

This distinction between flavor/aroma and bitterness is far from academic. Modern brewing trends, especially in the U.S., are geared toward amping up hop flavors and aromas. We’ve seen an explosion in hop breeding programs where the express goal is to get ever more expressive hops. It’s true not just in America, but Germany, England, New Zealand and Australia. The beer styles that take advantage of these qualities have seen a similar spike in popularity. IPA is now the most popular style in the craft segment in the U.S., tripling in popularity from just seven years ago. The whole reason breweries started citing levels of IBUs in the first place was to draw attention to the hops.

What’s fascinating is that brewing processes have shifted enormously in the past decade, as breweries try to wring ever more flavor and aroma out of the hop—and that has in turn further exposed the inadequacy of “IBU” to capture all the dimensions of “hoppiness.” Until fairly recently, breweries made hoppy beers the way they always had, by dosing their batches with a heavy load of hops early in the boil. Heat slowly converts one compound, alpha acid, into iso-alpha acid, the main compound responsible for bitterness. But hops that stew in boiling wort for 60 or 90 minutes lose most of the flavor and aroma compounds, which come from delicate, volatile essential oils. Breweries would throw in a few more toward the end of the boil to make sure they got some aroma and flavor, and they might have dosed the fermented beer as it sat in a conditioning tank (called dry-hopping) to add more. But the bulk of the hops went in at the start of the process.

Now breweries are starting to flip the equation. Instead of putting most of the hops in at the start of the boil, they put most in at the end—or even after the boil. Indeed, it is very common for breweries to use massive doses “post-boil”—hops that go into the wort after it’s taken off the flame. Much like steeping tea, this wort becomes infused with those delicate oils and terpenes and other aroma compounds, and develops that intense flavor we now associate with IPAs.

If you happen to have an IPA in your hand, put your nose over the lip of the glass. (If not, imagine you have one nearby.) What makes these beers so beguiling is that blast of aroma rising up. When you sip the beer, the flavors are just as vivid, like juice taken directly from tropical fruits. It’s possible to have an extremely bitter beer that has almost no aroma and little hop flavor; it’s also possible—and now common—to have a beer that is absolutely packed with flavor and aroma but is not very bitter. I have on more than one occasion overheard someone tell a bartender: “I don’t really like bitterness; what I like are IPAs.” This is not an uniformed patron; it’s a patron who lacks the language to express what he likes about a beer. He’s actually pointing out one element of “hoppiness” that isn’t captured by IBUs.

For you visual thinkers out there, here’s the way we currently try to express “hoppiness.”

Here’s how we should express it:

Hoppiness is not bitterness alone, and it can’t be expressed by IBUs alone. Hoppiness is that delightful mélange of bitterness plus aroma plus flavor. We may be a long way from being able to express that in a simple number, but we need to at least be thinking of it in these terms.

I have been drinking IPAs for years and consider myself to be a hop head
When ever I go to a new brewery I have always
picked the ones with the highest IBU trying to get the best hop taste I will have to change how I pick One of my favorite brewery’s is Stone They have a great selection of my hopy flavors

Thank you for clearing up a misconception for me. I have stayed away from IPA’s because if IBU numbers. Is there a IPA out there with a low IBU you could suggest. I do not like bitter. 70 IBU’s is about as big as I can tolerate.

70 IBU’s is pretty darn bitter. Most traditional IPA’s top out at 60. I would suggest Deschute’s Freesh Squeezed or Big Sky’s IPA. Those are very aromatic and flavorful without blasting your taste buds into oblivion with IBU’s.

Again IBU is the measurement of Alpha Acid not the full flavor of a beer. So you my find that a beer with really high IBU but also a high ABV may actually be very sweet and lacking in bitterness as the sweetness from the extra malt (sugar- which is converted into alcohol) is able to cover the bitterness of the hops. I would suggest you try Dos Cone Es 135IBU, 11.5%ABV by Cismontane Brewing to understand and if you can try compare RPM 50IBU, 6.5%ABV by Boneyard Brewing and you will find RPM is far more bittering. If you can’t get your hands on these try any single IPA compared with a triple IPA. Hope this help.

Oskar Blues Pinner is my favorite “beer of the moment.” It has wonderful flavor, aroma, and is quite “sessionable.” 35 IBU and only 4.9% ABV means you don’t have to worry about how drinkable they are (I can down one pretty quickly.)I actually quite like bitterness so I don’t know how this would drink for someone who doesn’t like bitterness with the low IBU/low ABV combo, but I find it very smooth and suggest giving it a try!

I couldn’t agree more, Jeff. There’s been a subtle industry effort (spearheaded by elements of the MBAA and ASBC) to move away from the IBU analysis because 1) it’s really only accurate for a fairly narrow range of beer styles, 2) it’s fairly outdated wet (and wasteful) chemistry, and 3) it doesn’t reflect aroma at all.

The problem is the beer drinking public has been repeatedly told that this number is what they need to look for (nevermind that thousands of US brewers don’t even measure it, they just make wildly inaccurate guesses based on their recipe parameters). As a brewing professional, it would make me very happy to leave the IBU behind forever and instead use a more accurate metric for bitterness and a separate metric for aroma.

I guess articles like this are the first step towards educating the beer drinker since a lot of brewers and brewing scientists already recognize this as a problem. So please keep on doing what you’re doing!

If bitterness is derived from hops, a bitter beer is inherently hoppy. You can still have hoppy tasting beer without overwhelming bitterness, but you cannot make a bitter beer without generous hop content. Logic might have made this article worthwhile.

The point Jeff is trying to make is that the times are changing. New hop varieties and brewing techniques are producing very aromatic and flavorful beers that aren’t necessarily bitter. Two IPA’s can both use the same amount and type(s) of hops in the recipe, yet end up tasting very different. Therein lies the problem.

You can have a very bitter beer that’s not very hoppy. Add a high dose of a high-alpha-acid variety like Magnum and boil for at least an hour (1.5 or 2 might be even better for this purpose). This will drive off the hop compounds that impart flavor and aroma, leaving just the bitterness in the wort. The result will be a bitter beer that is not “hoppy” as most people would describe it. Sure the bitterness is imparted by the hops, but that’s not the same as hoppiness.

Melissa, you might give Deschutes’ Fresh Squeezed IPA a try–it’s got vivid flavors and aromas and pretty understated bitterness. Another entire vein to mine are “session IPAs”–beers with low ABV and lots of hoppiness. But, since they have low ABV, they really have to temper the bitterness. I quite like Harpoon’s Take Five. It uses no bittering hops, only flavor and aroma hops.

Matt, I think you’re missing the point. If I tell you a beer is “hoppy,” can you tell me if it’s bitter or not? In the old definition of this term, where IBUs = bitterness, the answer would always have been yes. But now we have a new range of hoppy beers that are not particularly bitter. If we stick with your logic–and Dogfish Head’s–we have to throw up our hands and say we can’t distinguish between the two. There’s got to be a better way.

I was sipping on a Fresh Squeezed at my bar just the other day when my shift ended. Trying to explain why it was still a “hoppy” beer while not being overly bitter for an IPA, to a customer sitting next to me. He was relentless in trying to tell me that he thought if it wasn’t bitter, it wasn’t hoppy. Ignorance is not always bliss I suppose. Thanks for the article, it was a nice read.

Haha, Jeff I wrote that before I saw your suggestion to try a fresh squeezed. The whole time I was reading this article that was the IPA I was thinking of. Another good example of hoppy not bitter is the Proving Ground by Magnolia brewery here in San Francisco. If you’ve never had it, it’s worth a go. Not as fruity as the FS, but a nice almost sweet finish. Just a heads up.
-your local bartender

Cracking piece Jeff, similar points to those I’ve been trying to make in a series of columns recently, hopefully all singing off the same hymn sheet will start to shift the conversation away from this kind of thing. Cheers!

Having grown up on Lagers and done 3 long tours in Germany, I love a strong flavored Pilsener. All these trippled Hopped beers seem to be about is pure bitterness and I am not one with them. I do like some of the American PA’s and Red Chair NW PA is a nice change up for me at times as is the lager style ale Pyramid Curveball. But give me a crafted Lager and I am happy. Lagers take longer to make and a lot of brew pubs will not spend the time to craft up one. Old saying “Beer has food value but food has no beer value”. Thanks for the lesson.

god I’m sick of IPAs. Or at least this trend of adding as much hopps as is physically possible to a beer. Sure, hopps have a lot of flavor, but so do the malts and the grains. When pale ales first started gaining popularity in the 90’s, they were delicious. They were a fantastic departure from mass produced beers that were so prevalent. Now they’re like some skinny hipster who thinks they’re tough because they got a neck tattoo. I wouldn’t mind all the hopp stupidity if it didn’t fill every craft beer section of every liquor store, I’d be happy to live and let live, but it’s getting really hard to find decent beer anymore. It’s all like chewing on a mouth full of hopps.

Suspicions confirmed. I like hoppy beers but not overly bitter beers. It’s the nose. Before drinking any beer, wine (or pretty much anything I stick in my piehole) I savor the aroma first. The older I get the less alcohol I can handle which has led me to “session” beers. Two fantastic, lower alc., medium IBU (35ish) but super-hoppy and aromatic brews are Fremont Session IPA and Sesh Appeal from Silver City.

I have always had this issue with IPAs in general and I tend to stay away from them. I love the upfront nose and taste of hops. I hate the bitters. One of the few IPAs that I will drink, but it is hard to find and not something you can drink all the time, is Dogfish Head 120. It is also an example of a beer with high IBU, but doesn’t have a bitter taste due to the extra sugars. Low 40s for IBU is about my limit if there is nothing there to balance the bitterness. I appreciate the nuances in this article, but I don’t want to see IBU go away, rather add in another measure or two, like this article suggests.

I always described it as “hoppy on the front” vs. “bitterness at the end”. My favorite IPA is citrus notes and “hoppy on the front, with a clean finish”. That is just my way of describing it. Thanks so much for the info on the actual science of what I try to describe!

Try pumping in 500g of hops for a standard 5.5gal batch into Beersmith at ‘0’ and tell me how many ‘IBU’ you end up with. Now try ‘2’ and watch the numbers skyrocket. Did the calculator ask for a temperature of isomerisation? At what temperature does iso stop? IBU calculators are not true and correct. Not even close.